This group recently found reference to twenty seven Market Gardeners and Farmers in Woodnewton in the 1900’s.  This is an amazing amount for quite a small village but is probably due in no small way to the quality of the soil and the large sunny plots on the south side of Main Street.

The individual area of land would not have been large by today’s standards, but big enough to grow a supply of seasonal produce for the likes of Victor Walker who, also a market gardener, would buy from the villagers and then sell the produce in the surrounding villages from his small van. Fruit growers would take their produce by horse and cart to Leicester Market by the means of the Toll Road.  There was always a rush to get home, so they didn’t have to pay the toll which was at Morcott.

The land stretching to the north of the village was mainly orchard with daffodil bulbs planted between the rows of trees. Joyce and Jimmy Chambers lived in Cherry Holt (the last house on the left at the bottom of Orchard Lane) and in the spring, Joyce picked hundreds of snowdrops and daffodils to take to the twice weekly Peterborough Market.  At the same time she would take leeks and cabbages from her father’s garden in Main Street, and then as the year progressed, it would be soft fruit, plums and vegetables – hours of back-breaking picking and sorting.

Joyce was a well-known figure in Woodnewton as she also delivered the milk produced by one of the herds of cows owned by a village farmer. The milk was in a big churn and Joyce poured it into the buyers’ own milk jug.

When she left the village to live in Market Deeping to be nearer to her son, Joyce still didn’t give up her market life and continued to make cakes and jams for the Womens Institute stall at Stamford for many years until her retirement a few years ago.

2014